My Secret to Amazing Biscuits

I have a secret to confess. Many years ago, I was terrible at making biscuits. I tried biscuit recipe after biscuit recipe but they were all terrible; so terrible that I eventually gave up and made only “whop-whop” biscuits, which in my family means canned biscuits. A few years ago Dan and I took a hard look at our food bill and we began to re-evaluate some of our eating habits. We decided that canned biscuits were one of the foods that had to go. So I went back to my recipe books and started searching through my old ranch and church cookbooks. You know, those cookbooks you pick up at a bake sale then never look through again? Let me tell you, those cookbooks are chock full of useful information! After several attempts and some batches of pretty-good-but-not-amazing biscuits, I found THE recipe.

There’s a secret though that’s not included in the recipe; in fact it was something I learned along the way. Are you ready for my secret to amazing biscuits?

Don’t and I repeat, DON’T over-mix the dough! Biscuit dough isn’t like regular bread dough where you mix and mix and mix and – you get the point. Biscuits are more like pancake batter in the fact that if you over-mix them, they will come out hard and flat like; well, hockey pucks (though hopefully not black like hockey pucks-you got more than just over-mixing issues if they come out black!). Anything made with baking powder seems to come out hard and dense if you over-mix it. Luckily for you, my biscuit recipe is not strictly what’s called a “baking powder biscuit”, so you have a little more leeway, just don’t go crazy. Nobody wants to eat hockey pucks for breakfast (although I can’t vouch for hockey players, I’m not sure what they eat)!

These biscuits don’t require any special pan, in the past I used any old non-stick I had on hand. This past Christmas though, Dan bought me a new cookie sheet. It’s a Nordic Ware aluminum cookie sheet(affiliate link) with rolled edges so the pan won’t buckle. My parents had a couple while I was growing up, so at first I wanted one for purely nostalgic reasons. I’ve gotta say, I’ve been extremely impressed at how this pan has performed compared to my non-sticks. And I don’t have to worry about accidently scraping the non-stick coating off. I found that if I use vegetable oil to grease the pan, it leaves behind a sticky residue that’s really hard to get off, so I recommend using butter to grease these aluminum pans.

The Recipe!

Angel Biscuits

A delightfully flaky moist biscuit that is great smothered in gravy, with a little jam or eaten plain.

Course
Bread

Cuisine
American

Prep Time15minutes

Total Time28minutes

Servings15biscuits

AuthorJessie from This Country Home

Ingredients

5+cupflour

1/4cupsugar

3tspbaking powder

1tspsalt

1tspbaking soda

1 cupshorteningyou can substitute butter

1/2+tbspyeast1/2 tbsp = 1 packet

1/4cupwarm water

2cupbuttermilk

Instructions

Sift all dry ingredients together.

Cut shortening into dry mixture using a pastry blender or 2 knives.

Dissolve the yeast in the warm water then add it to the buttermilk. I usually warm the buttermilk up just a little before adding the yeast. If you warm it in the microwave be careful not to curdle the milk.

Mix the wet ingredients into the dry. Work quickly and be careful not to overmix, if you do you’ll have hockey puck biscuits! I always have to add more flour as I’m mixing though, make sure it’s just enough that the dough sticks together and you can quickly roll it out. Cut with a biscuit cutter dipped in flour.

Non stick cookie sheet: no grease

Aluminum cookie sheet: lightly grease with butter.

Bake at 400 degrees for around 13-15 min. When they’re lightly browned on top and you can thump them, they’re done.

*Note: To make buttermilk, I use 1 scant cup of regular milk and a 1 Tbsp. lemon juice, then let it sit for a bit.

Recipe Notes

New Field

If you’re looking for a little something extra and to make these amazing biscuits even MORE amazing, check out my Whipped Honey Butter, it’s creamy and just the right amount of sweet with a hint of vanilla. Little Miss was a lot of help on this kitchen adventure, but she was even more help eating them! We would love to know what your favorite way is to eat biscuits!

I like how you told who to make buttermilk if you don’t have it and if you don’t have lemon juice you can use same amount of vinegar. The over working is so important – in all aspects of our life – but especially with biscuits! Will try your recipe this weekend – thank you for your posts!

I agree! I never keep buttermilk on hand so I figured if I don’t there’s probably a lot of others who don’t either! I’ve seen that you can use vinegar in place of lemon juice but have never made it that way. I’d love to know how they come out!

I think your honey butter recipe will make for some wonderful hostess gifts. I have often used 1/2 pints of my homemade jams as a hostess gift, but this takes that to a whole new level. Since your Angel Biscuit recipe makes a bunch it will be perfect for a crowd and it would be easy to bake a small pan of biscuits to go with the honey butter or jam. Thanks for the inspiration.

I love to give jam as a gift too, but I hadn’t thought of giving this as a hostess gift-thank you! The honey butter was a great topping for the zucchini muffins we had at the wedding. Thanks for your lovely comment!